“You’ll like this one.”

Steady, Nerys. This is still the man who helped us pull off the Europani evac, when he certainly didn’t have to.“In that case, I’ll look forward to your—surprise. Thank you for stopping in.”

Macet didn’t move from where he stood, lingering expectantly for a long moment. Kira straightened up. She’d be damned if she’d cower in his presence. Even raised to her full height, she had to look up at the gul to meet his gaze. His broad, thick shoulders enhanced his dominating stature. So what.She’d taken down opponents far more intimidating than Macet.

“There is a story going around,” Macet said at length, “that you had a—how shall I put it?—a unique experience during the gateway affair. I’d be most interested in hearing about it.”

Kira had to admit it took a certain amount of fearlessness to seek out, without support personnel or weapons, a former enemy in the enemy’s territory. Wasn’t that what the entire Cardassian delegation was doing? Still, Macet had yet to provide answers about the purpose of their mission. Not too much trust on your part either, gul.

“Actually, I have another appointment due to arrive at any moment,” she said.

He nodded, his expression once again emotionless. “Another time, perhaps. Forgive my presumptuousness, Colonel. But please reserve a moment for me tomorrow at the reception, should duty permit.” Not waiting for her to reject him again, he offered her a brusque nod of his head and promptly exited her office.

Kira watched him leave. It seemed to her as if it took forever for the turbolift to arrive. When it finally did, it was occupied.

Taran’atar stepped onto ops. From her vantage, Kira could see the cold set of his eyes. Symbolically adjusting his weapons belt, the Jem’Hadar’s hand hovered over his sidearm as he strode past Macet without acknowledging him, a pointed gesture he clearly wanted the Cardassian to see. Because in seeing his hands ready to engage a weapon at the slightest provocation, the gul would know Taran’atar was prepared to fight. He’s laying the footings for a psychological war with Macet.

Macet responded to the Jem’Hadar with a smirk before he entered the lift. “Habitat ring,” he said, and as the lift descended, he turned his smile on Kira before disappearing from view.

“You wished to see me, Colonel?” Taran’atar said as he entered her office.

Kira was still looking thoughtfully at the turbolift doors when she got down to business. “I believe there was an incident recently involving your continued shrouding aboard the station that we need to straighten out…”

When she reached her office, Ro pushed Thriss into a chair and immediately contacted Dr. Tarses with a request that the new Starfleet counselor stop by for a consultation. Councillor zh’Thane would have concerns about privacy, but Ro didn’t give a damn. Thriss had started a bar brawl and deserved to be treated like anyone else who might have started a fight, be she common drunk or royalty.

As she began to process Thriss—taking her personal belongings and performing a general scan to assure she wasn’t carrying any hidden weapons—Ro couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was that trouble hadn’t come from where it had been expected. They’d taken massive precautions to assure that the station would be safe from the Cardassians and that the Cardassians would be safe from the station. That Ro’s biggest headaches had come from the Andorians instead of Macet’s crew was predictably unpredictable.

Thriss complied completely with Ro’s orders. She didn’t cry, offer protestations of innocence or petulant sarcasm; she stared off at nothing. Neither did she resist being led away to the holding cell and once she was there, she immediately lay down and fell asleep. Ro wrote her incident report, ignoring the semiregular pages from Councillor zh’Thane. She told the night shift corporal to take the names of anyone—meaning zh’Thane—who wanted to talk with her. Or let them make morning appointments and she would deal with their grievances then. From her monitor, she periodically checked in on the sleeping Thriss until she was satisfied this round was over. At least until Thriss woke up and then, with any luck, Ro would be back in her quarters and the counselor could manage any outbursts. Overall, Ro had guardedly optimistic expectations, though Councillor zh’Thane might still make her life a living hell in retribution for locking up Thriss.

When the therapist arrived, Ro put aside her usual distrust of counselors and shook Lieutenant Commander Phillipa Matthias’s offered hand. The counselor met her eyes directly when they exchanged names, unapologetically bypassed the usual social niceties and went straight to business. Impressive,Ro thought. If Matthias didn’t employ the usual touchy-feely, mind game hocuspocus techniques, she might look forward to involving the counselor in more of her investigations. Ro had developed a healthy dislike for mental health professionals during her incarceration. “Could this be latent anger against your sense of childhood abandonment?”had been Ro’s favorite query. Excuse me? A sense of abandonment? How about wholesale repression of your people as justification for being a little pissed off!

When Matthias asked for background information, Ro launched into the story of the bar fight and the parameters of the odd meeting with Councillor zh’Thane. Matthias halted Ro before she could get into specifics.

“Councillor zh’Thane’s perspective, while illuminating, is still her perspective. Thriss deserves an unbiased evaluation. Knowing that there’s some precedent for Thriss’ behavior is enough to get started. You have her in a holding cell. That would be…?” She gestured, inquiring at the four doors in Ro’s office that led deeper into the security station.

Before Ro could reply, a dark, bearded Bajoran man, hair threaded with gray, entered from the Promenade carrying a squirming toddler—a girl—and holding a young boy’s hand. Ro didn’t need to ask who the children belonged to: they had the same hazel green eyes she’d been looking into for the past few minutes.

“Sibias…?” Matthias said, clearly fishing for an explanation.

She nodded toward her guest. “Lieutenant Ro, station security.”

“Chon Sibias, Commander Matthias’s husband, and these are our children,” he said, shifting his daughter’s weight from one shoulder to another. “Pleasure meeting you, Lieutenant.”

Whenever Ro met a Bajoran, she peered at their earring to see if she could discern the individual’s family or geographical origins. The unique characteristics of Chon’s earring intrigued her, but before she could inquire further, the chubby-fisted girl wriggled out of her father’s arms and threw her arms around her mother’s legs, nearly tipping her backward.

“I couldn’t sleep, Mommy!” she wailed.

“The children wanted to say good night, Phillipa,” Sibias offered apologetically. His wife threw a hand against the wall to maintain her balance. The boy, about eight, shuttled behind his father, peeking out from behind his legs with shy seriousness. His rumpled pajamas and mussed hair indicated he might have been roused from bed to accompany his sister on this late-night visit.

“My room is scary. There are monsters in my closet,” she pouted, petulantly extending her lip.

Brushing the child’s tangled dark curls out of her face, Matthias dropped to one knee and refastened a crookedly done-up nightgown. “Mireh. Your father will make sure you have a wristlight so you can check under your bed as often as you like, but you need to go back to your bed. No dropping your tooth cleaner in the replicator and pretending you can’t find it. No hiding Walter in Arios’s closet. Your father will say no if you ask to sleep in our room,” she said over the child’s head, directly to her husband. “Right, Sibias?”